TRAGIC: Rook and Ronin, #1 Read Online Free Page A

my head. When I come out from behind the partition I thrust the shirt at Elise. "Here."
    She accepts it and I grab my bag and walk out the door.
    Pictures!
    What a load of shit! I just wasted my whole day, I'm on the wrong side of town, I'll never get back to the shelter in time to get a bed, and I have no money to even take the bus because I needed a ten-dollar coffee from freaking Starbucks!
    I descend the stairs as fast as I can and when I get to the bottom I just stand in front of the heavy oak door, unsure of what to do next.
    I collapse on the bottom step and start to cry.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Five - RONIN
     
    Her name is Rook. She's wrecked, those were Elise's words. She and Antoine are fighting over the TRAGIC campaign. Elise says no way, Antoine says she's the only one that can do it. With one look out his door, he picked her. He fell in photographer love with her.
    I smile to myself thinking of his words, because I knew it.
    We need her.
    But Elise has power in this house. Elise, no matter what Antoine says, wears the pants in their relationship because if Elise is unhappy Antoine cannot live with himself. He falls to pieces when they fight.
    So we work on her for almost half an hour inside the office. We wear her down, we make promises. We will watch Rook, we promise. We won't push her, we'll be careful. We promise all these things if Elise will let us keep this girl.
    We want her that bad.
    Of course, for very different reasons. Antoine wants to shoot her, I want to keep her. Antoine wants to take pictures of her gorgeous body and her fragile face, but I want to peel away her layers and see what's underneath. Antoine wants to make her famous and I want to hide her away in my room, under the covers of my bed, under me.
    By the time we get Elise to agree to our plan, I'm half afraid the girl might've left, but as soon as we open the door she's there, next to the window where Elise left her. She's looking outside, so deep in thought she hears nothing. Not the dozens of workers who mill about in her immediate vicinity and certainly not us as we extract ourselves, full of longing (Antoine), pity (Elise) and desire (me).
    We walk up behind her and still her gaze remains fixed on the people down below. You can just see she's not with us, that her thoughts are spinning and her life is chaos. It's written all over her face and Antoine sighs as he sees it too. I can read these girls almost as well as he can by now—that's my job. To get them worked up—to make these girls feel things—to bring those feelings out. Paint those feelings on their faces so when Antoine lifts his camera he's not capturing the body, but the mind.
    That's why he's famous. It's not the body or face, it's the emotion. The emotion I make them feel.
    I want to touch her right now but I hold back with Elise as Antoine starts shooting. The noise of the shutter snaps her out of her daze and I expect her to say something.
    Anything—like Am I doing it right? Is this what you want?
    But she says nothing. Antoine whispers to her, giving her small directions. She tilts her head when he asks, letting the light from the window fall across her face. It's late afternoon now, so the light is low and hazy. It bounces off her raven hair and her head turns in just the right way to catch some dying rays of sun, making her eyes sparkle. And that's how she's burned into my mind. The blackness of her hair, contrasting with the gray light behind her, and her bright blue eyes.
    She catches me staring and I hold my breath. But neither of us turns away. We stare, unabashed, until Antoine's direction pulls her back into the shoot and she's lost again—guarded and unhappy, frowning and resigned. She's a blackbird sitting in a tree staring out at the world, daring the wind to come and knock her off the swaying bough.
    She is wrecked, Elise is right. But she's not down yet. The look on her face is defiant.
    When I look over at the clock it's well past five.